Church Leadership & Strategy

For the Care of Souls

Harold L. Senkbeil, Lucas V. Woodford

• Publisher: Lexham Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781683593157
• eBook ISBN: 9781683593164
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

Christ's sheep need shepherding. That's where you come in. With more than 60 years of ministry between them, Harold Senkbeil and Lucas Woodford have come to understand that everything in ministry—even administration, leadership, and planning—revolves around the ancient tradition of the care of souls. Pastors are entrusted with the care of a flock by the Good Shepherd and are called to be faithful to this task. But pastoring seems to be getting more and more difficult.Based on a sound theological framework, Senkbeil and Woodford present a set of practical tools for church leadership and strategy. Calling on their vast experience, they encourage pastors to protect, guide, and feed their flock as Jesus would, bridging the eternal wisdom of the word of God with the everyday practicality of hands-on leadership.

CHAPTER 1

Learning from Experience: Leadership Woes

(Lucas V. Woodford)

In 2003 I began my ministry at age 27 as an assistant pastor in a very large congregation. We had 3,300 members with a Lutheran parochial grade school (pre-K-8) of nearly 300 students attached. Between congregation and school, we had about fifty employees and a $2.4 million annual budget. With ministry operations on this scale, leadership is essential. I was part of a solid leadership organization, being one of three full-time pastors with numerous other part-time pastors on staff, as well as around forty teachers and numerous other office and support staff. Though I was only there for two and a half years, I watched as the congregation went through a governance model change and implemented various ministry efforts in a large setting.

I saw upfront the importance of leadership. In fact, our congregation was part of a leadership institute that served as a host site to assist pastors in becoming better pastoral leaders through hands-on experience at our church. At a relatively young age in ministry, I led groups of pastors through my area of ministry responsibility (discipleship, Christian education, and small groups) and explored with them the intricacies of pastoral leadership and teamwork in our large congregation.

So, when I received the call to be senior pastor to Zion Lutheran Church only a short time later, I felt I had the skill set, the ambition, and the readiness to jump into that role at a smaller though still good-sized congregation and school (900 members and 150 students). Being confident in my leadership skills and excited for the new ministry and growing area I was moving to, I set out with great anticipation and confidence. However, I quickly found out the Lord has a way of humbling those who think too much of themselves.

My overconfidence and eager anticipation was met with a congregation and school beset by all kinds of internal strife, organizational disorder, ministry conflict, and personnel troubles. Though I was blessed to serve the saints of Zion for over a decade, the first five years were extremely difficult due to a host of issues, one of which was how I had bought into the lie that the church’s success was entirely dependent upon my own leadership. As you will see, I certainly affirm the importance of leadership. But making the success of a church (whatever that may be) hinge upon that one sole factor is dubious business.

THE TANTALIZING CHALLENGE

When I arrived, the congregation was convinced they needed to build a new state of the art church facility and school. In fact, they purchased twenty acres of land to do so just one month after my arrival. The congregation itself was situated in what had become a small but fast-growing bedroom community for the Twin Cities (of Minnesota), in the little town of Mayer. Formerly a farming community, new houses were exploding in three new developments. The congregation was growing and had a wonderful intergenerational mix of farmers and country folk combined with commuters and suburbanites of varying metropolitan mentalities.

But as I quickly found out, the congregation was not united about which property to buy, (they had three possibilities) nor were they agreed on how to pay for this new building project (they had cash on hand for the land, but nothing after that), or even if that building project should be the emphasis of the congregation’s ministry. Adding to this unrest was the well-meaning but misguided efforts of some factions in the congregation to champion one or the other of the various ministries within the congregation by rallying troops to their cause, but which created significant divisions. Combined with this were some long-standing personnel staff conflicts, as well as a significant budget shortfall and mounting debt. So, you can imagine the disharmony and angst it created for me as their new young and inexperienced pastor.

I was quickly sucked into the unhealthy spiral of interaction and dysfunction, which ultimately led to compassion fatigue and burnout that I unhealthily tried to bury deep down in my gut and hide lest I be seen as a failure. Pride is a wicked vice the devil will try to use in order to bring down many a pastor. That is why personal prayer and meditation, confession and absolution with a father confessor, and the regular exercising of your faith (apart from sermon prep or Bible study prep) is essential to combat and treat such attacks of the devil.

PAYING THE PRICE?

I did my best to put on the appearance of a brave leader. I kept reading all the latest leadership books and was a master at putting on my poker face and acting like everything was great though I was being torn up inside. In fact, I kept trying to do more, work harder, and be the leader I thought they wanted and needed, only to find I was creating as many fires as I was trying to put out, and alienating my family along the way.

Paranoia and uncertainty about the future of my ministry and the future of the congregation became my nightly obsession. Under the misbelief that if I worked more, tried harder, and was a better leader people would like me more, I began coming into the office at 3:00 a.m. to start my day and staying until late at night after I had attended the last meeting of the day. Even so, landing on a common and uniting leadership emphasis for the congregation was ever elusive. Strife continued. Factions remained. Sadly, after one congregational meeting a former older staff member walked out of the meeting in anger and intentionally shouldered me, nearly knocking me down the stairs to our exit doors. He justified his action by saying I was full of “piss and vinegar.” Unfortunately, no one saw the interaction at the moment of physical contact. I viewed tattling on this individual as unhelpful and so buried it among all the other toxic and volatile unrest I thought a leader was simply supposed to willingly bear and smile about.

I was trying to do absolutely everything by my own reason and strength. I knew the Great Commission, I embraced it, and I was trying to fulfill it, even if it killed me! But the growth wasn’t magically happening like all the church growth books said it was supposed to. (Though some of my new member classes were at high levels—thirty-five or more people—many others were quite slim.) Those same books said a leader looking to bring change and vibrancy to his ministry should expect all kinds of resistance and animosity and needs to be prepared to endure some misery in ministry and life. They said this was just the price you should expect to pay if you wanted to lead a change toward a passionate, vibrant, mission-oriented church.

I bought into the misbelief that all the misery I was experiencing was simply what ministry was supposed to be like and was the price of being a leader. Those were some very dark times. In fact, the only friend I thought I had was the hot shower I took in the morning. The devil and our own sinful flesh love to isolate us and attack us with all kinds of false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice.

But this is why what I offer here is my warning to recognize the important but limited role of leadership in ministry. Yes, pastors certainly need to be a leader and know how to think strategically, organizationally, and to balance staff personalities and directives, as well as oversee and ensure things are getting done, or if that is not your strength, find someone who can do those things for the congregation. But to make leadership the hallmark of ministry is to subject Christ and his word to your leadership, which is not the nature of the church. Therefore, a word of caution is warranted.

Growth and Conflict

Church revitalization and growth often come at great cost to the pastor. For example:

In his book Direct Hit: Aiming Real Leaders at the Mission Field, Paul D. Borden says: “When leading a congregation of unwilling people to higher levels of effectiveness, risking security and significance demands a courage that may come only through engaging in considerable losses.”1

See also Thom Rainer’s Breakout Churches: Discover How to Make the Leap: “The combination of pastoral tenure and persistence seems to be a powerful combination that God has used to move these churches to greatness. While many of our comparison church leaders had a pattern of leaving churches at the early signs of difficulties and obstacles, the Acts 6/7 leaders recognize that the greatest days for the church may lie just beyond the latest struggle.”2

One last example is Jock E. Ficken’s Change: Learning to Lead and Living to Tell About It. “As congregational leaders, we should not be surprised by the external opposition by forces in our communities. We should not wring our hands in despair nor should we seek always to avoid those forms of opposition.”3

ASPIRING TO LEADERSHIP AT ALL COSTS: A WORD OF CAUTION

During my early years at Zion the congregation retained the services of a professional leadership guru and organizational manager in order to try and help steer the congregation in the right direction. The individual also happened to be affiliated with the same pastoral leadership organization that I assisted at my first and much larger congregation. I worked with this person closely during this time, while also becoming engaged in a year-long contract with another ministry coach to assist myself and the congregation’s newly-hired-fresh-from-seminary associate pastor. I was bound and determined I was going to turn things around.

The leadership guru worked with our congregation for about a year, developing a strategic plan and work plan, which was unfortunately crafted in concepts foreign to the congregational leaders and therefore would end up ineffective. In time, after experiencing all the dysfunction and disorder happening internally firsthand, this leadership consultant decided to withdraw from the project, indicating the situation and unrest was just too intense, and that leading the congregation through this was more difficult than first anticipated.

At that point I remember thinking to myself, “Seriously, you’ve got to be kidding me! I thought leaders were never supposed to back down. And you’re the leadership expert? If you’re the professional and you want out, where does that leave me? Sure, you get to go and hide from this mess, but I’m still here and still called to serve and love these people.” Very quickly I began to think, “Maybe leadership at all costs was not what it was cracked up to be, nor as effective some claimed it to be.”

Three years into this ministry setting I was exhausted, terrified, and burned out. Yet, I never let a soul know just how lonely and hurt I was, nor the anguish that was eating me up on the inside. In fact, my anxiety was so high my regular digestive functions stopped working properly for a time. Thus, when the leadership guru bowed out from assisting the congregation, something in me finally snapped. If this leadership guru could not handle the intensity of this congregation’s situation and had to drop out, even though all the latest strategic planning techniques and leadership building exercises had been utilized and employed, where exactly did that leave me?

A NEW WAY FORWARD

It was here that I began to see the empty promises of those who made pastoral leadership the end all to be all for ministry. I did not disavow pastoral leadership. Rather I saw it in a new and more proper light. For it was also at this point that I began to see the care of souls and the historic role of the pastor as physician of the soul was far more than my ability to be a good leader.

Part of that recognition occurred in the doctoral studies that I was also engaged in at the same time as all this unrest. (Nothing like adding more work to an already chaotic mess). It was here that I was introduced to Professor Harold Senkbeil (who would later become a very dear friend, confidant, and even baptismal sponsor to one of my children). This loving professor and pastor gave me permission to see ministry in a fuller and more historic light, which included profound insight into the care of souls and not just the leading of members. Thus, I began to care more intentionally and classically for the individual souls of the congregation, giving them Jesus as I was called to do, rather than giving them myself, my ingenuity, or my next great idea. I learned that leadership and the care of souls go hand in glove when soul care leads the way.

Resourcing History

The result of Lucas’s doctoral studies in Christian outreach can be read in his book Great Commission, Great Confusion, or Great Confession? The Mission of the Holy Christian Church (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012). Lucas explores the latest trends in the North American church in light of a careful analysis and assessment of the Great Commission and the historic confession of the holy Christian church. The New Testament church and historic church valued the word of God and the daily vocations of ordinary people more than a method or technique for growing the church. The contemporary church can follow this dynamic yet simple paradigm for outreach and identity today.

Coupled with the beginnings of a new strategic plan put in theological and leadership language that the congregational leadership could understand, I noticed a shift in my ability to lead and their receptiveness to receive my leadership. It was at this point that I began to recognize the tempered place of leadership, and the need to keep it located in the helpful but limited role it has to play in pastoral ministry. As such, I began to study the larger role of leadership woes in the church and compare it to the historic confession of the church to see how I might use that historic confession to help lead and direct a congregation in the development of a new and more fully developed strategic plan.

A BALANCED APPROACH TO LEADERSHIP

From this very trying experience I want to offer a word of caution about how pastors might approach and carry out their leadership development in their congregations. Again, please understand I affirm the importance of leadership, but I want you to see it has a specific place and limitation within the pastoral ministry. Pastoral ministry is far larger than the leadership of a pastor.

Even so, for many years the trend and emphasis in the North American church has been on leadership, especially the leadership ability of the pastor. Workshops, courses, and whole institutes have been established around the importance of the leadership of a pastor, which also often promised increased vitality or numerical growth to the local church if pastors would just be the right kind of leader and develop the right kind of strategic plan. As I’ve already told you, I fully bought into that kind of thinking, though always trying to maintain my theological scruples. Yet I found the promises of this leadership model to be wanting in my own experience. And it took its toll on me em...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Sidebars
• Series Preface
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Learning from Experience: Leadership Woes (Lucas V. Woodford)
• Chapter 2: The Good, the Necessary, and the Ugly Sides of Leadership—How It Nearly Ended My Ministry (Lucas V. Woodford)
• Chapter 3: Leading Your Sheep—Administration and Strategic Planning (Harold L. Senkbeil)
• Chapter 4: Pastoral Depletion Syndrome (Harold L. Senkbeil)
• Works Cited